A Library Addition

I have recently found a new author that I adore. I read one of her books a few months back and now I can’t stop myself when I see a new one of hers in the bookstore! So these books are all written by her, so I figured I would put them all together because they were all very, very good. The author is Jodi Picoult. I believe the first on I read of hers was Nineteen Minutes. Very, very good. She seems to write about some very controversial subjects and I love how her characters evolve and really discover themselves in each book.

Handle with Care is a heart wrenching story about a little girl, Willow, so fragile, the slightest touch could break her. Literally….Willow is born with a disease known as Osteogenisis Imperfecta. Also known as Brittle Bone Disease. Yes, it is real, and yes I have seen this very rare disease in person. The author goes into great detail talking about the disease, the way the whites of the eyes are shaded a very pale blue, almost grey color and when a bone breaks how they become almost electric blue. The story revolves around the little girl and her family, but it is told to Willow, from the points of view of the characters in the story. Like most of Picoult’s books, there is some legal action that needs to be taken. In this story, the parent’s sue the OB for wrongful birth of their daughter. Stating that had they known what she had, they may have made the decision to abort. So the hot topic in this book is, if you knew that a child you so desperately wanted would be born with a debilitating, life altering disease, would you terminate the pregnancy??

The Tenth Circle is yet another legal case, but this time it is a rape trial that turns into murder. A father who is a stay at home dad, but still does free-lance work comes face to face with his terrible past and a terrible reality for his daughter. He doesn’t see how she is growing up right in front of his eyes, nor does he see his wife’s secret behavior. Things go terribly wrong at a party for the girl and it only seems to escalate from there. The father seems to travel to Hell and back trying to pull his daughter back from the deep dark place he knows she is falling into, but as he chases after her, the demons he has long hidden begin to resurface and doesn’t seem to recognize himself anymore. Together the family discovers how far they will go for each other and what it takes to walk through Hell.

Perfect Match is every parents worst nightmare come to life. Nina, a very successful ADA fights child molesters every day in court. Some win, some loose, but it will never happen to her. Then one day she notices something in her son. Something not right. She looks at her son and sees in him what she sees in all the children she works with every day. She flies into a rage and will go any distance to save her child and to protect all other children. She suddenly finds herself on the opposite end of the law, not as the prosecutor, but as the defendant. Not comfortable at all in this new skin, her family is ripped apart by her choices. This novel brings to light another controversial topic, and a parents reaction of what they should or should not do. For Nina, it was the only choice she had.

Plain Truth is a book I thought was absolutely fascinating. It takes places in a sleepy Amish community in the Pennsylvania country side. In the middle of the night a birth takes place in a quiet barn. Within a few hours, the baby is found, dead. But where is the mother? No one claims to have had a child, but the mother to be is quickly found. She denies having any baby, but the truth is there in the back of her mind no one can reach. A trial quickly begins and a fight to save an innocent live begins. I loved this book and never guessed the ending, and never would have in a million years. I loved reading about the simple life of the Amish community. It just drew me in and made me wonder how it would be to live like that. Straight from the Earth, no technology, no electricity…just plain.

Mercy is probably the most controversial book I have read of Picoult’s. A sleepy little town in the Massachusetts country side is rocked when an apparent act of mercy comes to town. A man claiming to be the chief of police’s cousin has confessed to murder. He confesses he killed her because she asked him to. The police soon discover, the wife had been terminally ill and the husband was simply carrying out her wish. The town is turned upside down by this unwelcome visitor and the notion that love so strong can make you kill. This book was written in the mid 90’s so it is very “Dr. Death”. But it made me think, could I have the strength to kill my terminally ill husband? Is euthanasia for humans right? Does any human have the right to help another in an assisted suicide? Ahh…so many questions and not enough answers. This book is about undying love, faithfulness twisted with temptation, and a man’s absolute love for his wife.

I am working on another one of her books and based off the last several I have been able to get my little hands on, I cannot wait to finish it!!!

Major blog updates!!

Wow…I have been so lazy with all of my 101 updates lately. Especially on the ones that seem to happen every month like our date nights and my new recipes.

Well I guess I will go ahead an jump into my recipe for the month of September. I guess it isn’t so much a new recipe because I have made it in other variations, but the idea of it is something I have been wanting to do for a while now. I found this idea on one of the many baking/cooking blogs I follow. I have been wanting to it all summer and just never had the chance.

Well finally I had the chance! We had some friends that were getting together and having a BBQ one night and I of course volunteered to bring the dessert!! All of our friends are crazy about the cupy-cakes I have been making lately so they were all very excited as well. The idea for them may sound strange and I got some curious looks when I said hamburger cupy-cakes, but believe me, it is nothing what it sounds like!!

I took my basic vanilla cupcake recipe, added a little yellow food gel, whipped up a pan of brownies and homemade butter cream frosting and presto! Hamburger cupy-cakes!!

Here are the recipes I used:

Vanilla cupcakes
1 ½ cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter at room temp
2 large eggs, room temp
1 ½ tsp vanilla
½ cup whole milk
¼ cup sour cream

Vanilla butter cream
1 stick butter
16oz powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Milk to get creamy consistency

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 deg F. Line a standard cupcake/muffin pan with paper or foil liners. In a bowl whisk together flour, salt, baking powder. Set aside. In another bowl measure out the sugar and scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar. Work the sugar and seeds between your fingers until the seeds are well mixed in and the sugar is very fragrant. Cream butter and sugar in stand mixer on med speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Bead it vanilla and sour cream. Alternate the flour in 3 additions with the milk in 2 additions. Not waiting til all the flour is mixed in before adding the milk. Beating on lowest speed until just combined. Scrape down sides of bowl and mix on med speed for 30 seconds until no traces of flour remain. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cupcake cups, filling each about ¾’s full. Bake until lightly golden, when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean or the top bounces back when lightly pressed. 16-20 min.


For the frosting, just cream the butter and slowly add in the sugar, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom of your mixing bowl often. Once all sugar is added, add you vanilla and milk slowly until you get the spreadable consistency you like!

And this idea is of course thanks to Loves to Eat!! They were a huge hit! I did feel a little guilty that I didn’t make the brownies from scratch like everything else, but I was really pressed for time! And of course, I completely forgot to snap one when I was done!


We had our October date “night” this past weekend. We have been talking for a while now that when it is really nice outside we want to rent some bikes and go biking around Coronado Island. It seems to be “the” thing to do on the island. There are so many little bike rental shops all over the island and by the Del, we just thought it looked fun.

So we had nothing else planned that day except to go rent our bikes and take all the time in the world doing what we wanted. We slept in late, got some IHOP and then we were off on our adventure.

Luckily I have a friend who works at one of the bike rental shops and she told us she would let us have the 2nd hour free. Which, it wasn’t expensive to begin with (only $10 an hour per person), but hey, who doesn’t want to save a little money?? So we got our bikes and decided that since it was such a nice day and the board walk and beaches were just crazy busy, we would head off down the Coronado Strand towards the mainland.

It definitely took me a while to get my “bike” legs back and my balance, but it came back fairly quick. I honestly haven’t been on a bike in forever! Like years…probably since I was like 15 or 16. But it was blast! Now saying that I haven’t been on one in years, you can imagine- TMI ALERT- how my rump felt. Way sore! In fact it hurt for a good 2 days after the fact as well. The ride down the strand we had the wind pushing us along so it was nice and easy. But on the way back, the wind of course picked up and we were heading straight into it. Now my legs were on fire.

But we had our fun and got a good work out from it as well.

Next was dinner. D grilled some steaks that had been marinating a few days and I threw some salad into some bowls and there was dinner. We snuggled on the couch watching some of our DVR’d shows and hit the sack pretty early. Very nice date “night” if I do say so myself!!

And now for my first 101 fail….I wanted to do a day in the life on 10/10/10 by taking my camera everywhere I went that day. I woke up that morning with every intention to, but I just got so busy and had so much going on, I completely forgot.

I know what all I did that day, but it was less than exciting. I guess that would be the point of a “Day in the life of…”. D and I were able to sleep in and just do some normal house work and laundry. No need to take pictures there. I had already made plans to go to a friends house later that day and work on some baby shower stuff for a friend. Well that turned into, “Why don’t we cook out too??” So our original time was pushed back a few hours and that way D and I could also run to Wal-Mart.

Oh the joys of Wal-Mart. And may I just say, that under normal circumstances I don’t mind going to Wal-Mart. But when you live near one of the only Super Wal-Marts (I swear) in San Diego, and then put it next to the Mexican border…yea. Can you say crazy? And it doesn’t matter what time of day you go….believe me we have tried it all. 10am on a Sunday, nope…9am on a Wednesday, nope…11 pm on a Monday! None of it matters. There is always about 2.5 million people in there, all with 12,000 kids a piece, most of them not speaking English. But I digress…

After our fun run to Wal-Mart, we ran back to the house, unloaded our grocery stash and took off across town to our friends. We took a different route than normal because we were trying to get there quickly, and of course that didn’t happen either.

As D and I were approaching our exit, a guy who was beside us, whipped around behind us, into the far left lane and took off. I was already going 80mph so I know he was going well over 100mph. The next thing you know is D is saying, “Watch, that guy is going to crash!”, and I swear not ½ a second later he looses control of his car and smashes into the concrete divide. My heart sank and I flew past my exit to where the guy crashed to help him. The nurse in me just kept thinking, "Car please don’t explode, don’t explode!!!" The amount of smoke pouring out of the vehicle was amazing. As we get out of the car on the other side of the freeway, we see the driver’s door is open.

I am thinking we are going to have to pull this guy out of the car, cut and bleeding with a few broken bones. I didn’t see him moving at all! Then suddenly he swings a leg out and steps out. He runs across the freeway and asks me for a piece of gum. A piece of gum!?!?! Guy are you kidding me?!?! After I establish he was ok, I ran to my car to call 911. The operator was rather rude too. He kept telling me it was okay, that I can leave the scene and I don’t need to wait for the cops. Calling 911 from the road while driving is okay. Umm…no I saw the accident and I am a nurse and wanted to make sure the driver was okay. The tune changed after I told the operator that.

After I got off the phone, I checked again on the driver. He was standing talking to D and using his cell phone. Apparently the guys was late to work and he was in a hurry. He kept asking us to take him to work just right down the road. We told him over and over that he couldn’t leave his car like that (half his back end in the left lane) and he needed to wait for the cops. He was acting nervous and chomping away on the gum. So D and I assumed he might have had a drink or 2 watching some football and just lost track of the time. He didn’t seem drunk by any stretch of the imagination, but I am guessing he didn’t brush his teeth, so there might have been alcohol on his breath. Needless to say, we stayed until the police arrived and we made our way to our friends house. Finally…

We get there and the cookout started early so our friends were already there and having a good time. Baby shower stuff was postponed a few more hours. I was so busy chatting away with friends and helping cook that my camera stayed in my purse the whole night.

After the cookout, we hit the downtown area known as the Gaslamp to have a few drinks with friends. It was a Sunday but everyone had off the next day off, thanks to a guy known as Columbus, except me.

So that was my failure. Being so crazy busy, my camera didn’t see the light of day on 10/10/10.

Concert #4

Almost done with my 101 concert list! I said I wanted to go to 5 concerts and honestly I thought it would take me a lot longer than this to complete it. But next weekend D and I will be in Las Vegas seeing Garth Brooks and that will wrap up my 5 concert for my 101. I totally thought it would take me the entire 1001 days to get it done, but there have been so many great concerts this year, D and I just haven't been able to resist!


Our latest adventure was attending the Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Music Fest here in SD. Basically a giant, all day rock music festival. We got to see several newer up and coming bands and even meet a few. We got to meet a band called Hell Yea too and got their autograph. They were pretty nice. But the whole point of the concert was to see the 2 main acts...Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed.


Now I am not a hard core rock junkie like my darling counterpart...I am much more into country. But this was my second time to see Disturbed and my first for Ax7 and they did not disappoint. We went with some of D's friends from work, and luckily one was a girl so I was not totally alone. It was definately good times had by all!!

Me and my Jimmy P!!

Me and my girl Kristy!

The fellas...

And of course, me and D!

Movie date night!

Staying right on track with my 101, last Friday night D and I went out to dinner and a movie, then home to bed. It has been a rough couple of weeks and D and I have been crazy busy. Between me working 48 hours a week and D in and out of town all the time, we really look forward to our date nights.

Since we are going to Vegas in a week we tried to do something low key and not too expensive. We kept seeing a commercial for a restaurant here in town called Hometown Buffet. D said he had been there before when he was little when we still lived in OK.

So we looked it up and off we went. It was pretty good. Very Golden Corral, buffet set up. One cool thing about it was that it had ICEE drinks as a drink choice! I was like a kid in a candy store! I freaking love those things! I know if I was a kid I would be super stoked about that. I did resist however since we were going to go to a movie later and we always share and ICEE at the movies.

For our movie part of the night, we went to go see the new Resident Evil: 3D. We are big fans of the series and D plays the video game as well. We have been watching them in theaters since they first came out. I think this is the 4th one and from the ending I am going to guess there will be another. It is your typical zombie, semi scary, action movie...got it? It was good and I was pleased with it.

The only thing I was bummed about was the 3D part. You know I am not a big fan of 3D movies. I just don't get it. I never feel like 3D makes it (or any movie for that matter) any better. I felt the same way about Avatar actually. I didn't fee like the graphics or whatever you call them really stood off the screen much more than normal. I mean there were a few parts yea, but I didn't think those parts of the movie made it seem any cooler. Does that make any sense??

Well anywho, that was our date night in a nut shell. We came home, watched some TV in bed and fell asleep. Like I said we have been so busy lately that we just haven't been staying up very late. But that is it for now!!

Date night!

Wow...it has been a really long time since I last blogged! I have a ton of book updates, but that will be another post entirely! This post is all about my date night in August!

D was as usual gone most of the month, but we did manage to go out for my birthday...a little early, but out all the same. First we went to play some putt putt golf. It was so much fun!!! It has has been years, and I mean YEARS since I last played. I mean I was probably 12 the last time I played and I am 25 now (eek! That hurts to say!) But D and I had so much fun...jerk didn't let me win, but at least I am no longer rusty and I can whoop him next time!

Everytime I drive up the highway to work I always pass this fun looking putt putt park. I looked it up and saw that it was a Celebration Station/Perfect Swing type place. Games, bumper boats, batting cages, and of course PUTT PUTT!!!

We got a package that allowed you to play one round of golf with 20 game tokens. D put the smack down on my golf game, but I got him good on the arcade games. We were going to play 2 rounds of golf, but we were getting hungry and wanted some food! So we cashed in our tickets and out to CPK (California Pizza Kitchen) we went. Luckily there is one right by the house so we got to go home and freshen up afterwards, before going out with our friends. And just before that D gave me my fabulous present...a pair of sparklies for my ears. :D He is so good to me!

So that is my date night for August!

Dave Mathews Band

Another concert done....we went to see Dave Mathews Band on August 20th, 2010. It was at the outdoor ampitheater just aorund the corner from our house. It was really, really good.

I had never been to DMB before and it was quite and experience! Especially being in southern California....I had the WORST headache of my life just after the concert started and I was so dizzy and sick to my stomach I could hardly stand....thank you SoCal and you love of weed.

But I was cool just sitting there on our blanket listening to the music. D and I want to find a live album on CD so we can listen to it more often. It was a first for both of us! I wish I would have taken some picuters, but I totally forgot!

So that makes 3 for the year and I am right on track for finishing my 5 concerts for my 101!!!

Oreo Cupy-cakes

Yet again, I am on a baking kick and I wanted to make these totally yummy cupy-cakes…thanks to Homemade by Holman yet again for the recipe.


Sunday night was Hell Week Breakout for the BUDS students that D works and trains with. BUDS students are Navy SEAL students in just their 4th week of 1 ½ year long training. So they still have a very long road ahead of them and more than likely 90% won’t make it. That is just how it is.

But I digress….since it was Breakout and I had never been I wanted to go with D and see what it was all about. I knew the fellas would be hungry and instead of having D take the cupy-cakes in the next morning, I decided to take them in with me that night so I could see their faces when I walked in…I practically got attacked at the door!!!

We took about 1 ½ dozen with us last night and at least ½ were gone by the time we left…and we were only in the shop for about 2 hours total. I guess they really liked them!

They even have a yummy double stuff Oreo in the bottom!!!

Oreo Cupy-Cakes

By Homemade by Holman

Cake:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 2/3 cups sugar

3 large egg whites

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

36 Oreo cookies

Get your oven toasty at 350. Get 2 muffin pans lined with your papers and seperate 24 Oreo cookies. Place 1/2 Oreo, creme side up in each cup. Add the other halves to the remaining Oreos in either your food processor or ziploc bag to crush them up. I used a ziploc and just crushed them in my hands. Easy and less mess to clean up. Make sure you get a good amount or different sized cookie chunks...not all crumbs but not all huge either.

Now in a mixing bowl, combine butter and sugar and beat on medium for 2 to 3 minuts until light a fluffy! Agg egg whites one at a time and mix well after each addition. Next, sift togheter your flour, salt and powder. Add milk and vanilla together in a measuring cup and gently mix.

With mixer on lower speed, add 1/3 of your flour mixture alternated by 1/2 of your milk mixture, mixing well after each addition. Repeat and end with flour. After that it is time to mix in your Oreo cookie chunks!

Now you can fill each cup 2/3 full. I again used my Pampered Chef medium scoop and it was perfect. Bake 18 to 20 minutes until tops are gold and toothpicks come out clean when inserted into the cupy-cake. Cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

1 T vanilla extract

2 T heavy cream

1 lb powdered sugar

24 Oreos for garnish

Beat butter and cream cheese in a medium bowl on medium speed until it is smooth and creamy. Add vanilla and cream and beat until well incorporated. Now comes the fun part of the powdered sugar. I sifted mine before adding because I find it is so much smoother and creamier, but to each his own. Add your sugar 1 cup at a time and mix well after each addition.

Fill piping bad and decorate!

I used yummy double stuff Oreos in the bottom and mini bite size Oreos on top of the cream cheese frosting.

The only suggestion that I have after making them would be to used slightly more powdered sugar that called for, just to make it thicker, Pam the papers cups, and not cook them quite as long. The recipe called for 18 to 20 minutes and I did right at 18 and I think I probably could have done about 15 or 16.…maybe. They were a little too toasty for me.

Really fabulous other wise.

I even managed to save a few to keep at the house for D and I to enjoy.